Imola "200 Miglia"

The extraordinary group of the official 750 Imola motorcycles, in the paddock of the 200 Miglia race, in 1972

Paul Smart and Bruno Spaggiari speed along the straight of the Autodromo del Santerno

Smart and Spaggiari duelling during the race

Bruno Spaggiari, Fabio Taglioni and Paul Smart at the end of the victorious race

The mistery of Imola 1972

Frequently, history unearths something totally unexpected, just like in
archaeology. Sometimes, reconstructing the history of Ducati down to its
very last details is not dissimilar from the job of an archaeologist.
The
1972 Imola "200 Miglia", for example, is a constant source of surprises,
just like a familiar, thoroughly excavated site from ancient
history, which you think has already revealed all of its treasures.

Recently we
came across an official programme produced for the first ever Imola
"200 Miglia" race and
uncovered a real mystery. Leafing through the yellowing pages and reading the
familiar names of race participants, such as Agostini, Brambilla, Tait, Read, Rutter,
Spaggiari, Smart, Villa and Brettoni, we discovered two
names, next to that of the Ducati 750, belonging to two riders who
never graced the track that day: Barry Sheene and Gilberto Parlotti.

To understand the reasons why
those two racers didn't actually take part in the competition we started
from the renowned names associated with Ducati: Bruno Spaggiari,
Ermanno Giuliano and Gilberto Parlotti. Spaggiari, as we all know, was
at the time the Bologna manufacturer's most well-established racer,
having ridden the Marianna at the Motogiro as far back as 1955; the
young recruits Giuliano and Parlotti belonged to the generation of
Ducati racers who had already made their name on the Ducati 250 in the
late 1960s and took turns riding the brand new 500 GP 1971 from that
very year. The only difference was that Ermanno Giuliano was not only a
racer but also the official Ducati tester, so he was a full-time
employee of the company.

As for the foreign racers, it is my
belief that Ducati, or rather the Ducati management team, made up of
Fabio Taglioni, Fredmano Spairani and Cosimo Calcagnile, took a lucky
dip so to speak. The Imola "200 Miglia" was a completely new race at
the time, directly inspired by the more famous

Daytona 200. In those
days, several British racers were tempted across the pond to try their
luck on the American tracks. Smart was one such racer. In fact he
received a transatlantic phone call from his wife Maggie (Barry Sheene's
sister), who told him she had been contacted by Ducati to ascertain
whether her husband would take part in this new race, on the back of a
bike specifically built for the occasion.

Smart agreed, as did the
Englishman Alan Dunscombe. But what about Sheene? What happened to him?
Ducati did approach
the young Sheene that year but he later decided to enter the race on a
Triumph 3, at the time considered one of the best bikes in the game.
Triumph, however, was not able to meet Sheene's demands, since it was
experiencing financial trouble, so in the end Sheene did not take part
in the race at all.

As for Gilberto Parlotti, we know that he took
part in a few 1971 races on a 500 GP, even winning one, unofficial,
competition at Skopja Locka. Parlotti was very close to some of the best
known Ducati mechanics such as: Giorgio Nepoti, Rino Caracchi and
Franco Farnè, although in actual fact he was not a regular Ducati racer
but a sort of motorcycling freelancer, with ties to various
manufacturers.

According to some eyewitness accounts from those who were actually involved in the preparation of the bikes
for the Imola "200 Miglia" race, in the end more bikes were prepared
than racers were available, to the extent that Ducati tried to attract
Jarno Saarinen and Renzo Pasolini among others, although they did not
show any particular interest in the new bike, and Walter Villa, who did
take part and came third, but on a three-cylinder Triumph 750.

At
this stage you might ask why Ducati did not succeed in attracting enough
racers to enter all seven bikes they had prepared for the race. The
answer may well be this: the Imola "200 Miglia" was a brand new race at
the time and the first race ever dedicated to racing bikes based on
production models. So it was to be expected that all the motorcycling
manufacturers active in those days were vying for attention, since
success in that race would lead to economic success in terms of sales.
And
let's not forget that the maxi bike boom had just begun, so victory in
Imola would undoubtedly have meant a strong demand for a certain kind of
bike, especially if it was a winner on the track.

At the time the
multi-cylindered British bikes (Norton, Triumph, BSA), together with the
early Japanese bikes (Kawasaki and Honda), were definitely the bikes to
beat, and practically all the Italian manufacturers of the period stood
as their opponents, producing the first large displacement bikes
(Guzzi, Laverda, MV, Ducati).
So Ducati, which could not boast the
same number of past victories as the other manufacturers, was not able
to persuade the racers to ride a bike they were unfamiliar with, and
which above all did not appear to be competitive. But as we well know,
the race had a different outcome altogether.
So it was decided to supply two bikes each for Spaggiari (9), Smart (16) and Giuliano (39), while Dunscombe (45) just had one.

For
the record, Smart and Spaggiari were triumphant in first and second
place (with an unforgettable, historical finale on the last lap when
Spaggiari's bike ran out of fuel), while Giuliano had to pull out
feeling ill with a high temperature and Dunscombe was relegated to the
back of the pack.

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